


The Kind Of Fear That Hurts

by ohgodmyeyes



Series: Skylin [3]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends: Jedi Quest Series - Jude Watson
Genre: Angst, Awkwardness, Fear, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Implied Sexual Content, Insecurity, Jealous Anakin Skywalker, Jealousy, Kissing, Loneliness, M/M, Padawan Anakin Skywalker, Rare Pairings, Romance, Skylin, Teenagers, Tenderness, Touching, catching feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-10
Updated: 2021-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-17 03:47:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29960475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohgodmyeyes/pseuds/ohgodmyeyes
Summary: Anakin and Ferus have been getting close to one another for a while now, at least physically. One day, though, Anakin decides that he doesn't appreciate the way he thinks Ferus has been looking at other boys.Ferus is forced to acknowledge the depth of his feelings for Anakin when he finds himself insisting, quite truthfully, that hedoesn'tlook at other boys.
Relationships: Ferus Olin/Anakin Skywalker
Series: Skylin [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2026016
Comments: 5
Kudos: 10





	The Kind Of Fear That Hurts

"What the hell was _that?"_

Anakin hissed these words into Ferus' ear as the two of them met in one of the Temple's many corridors. They might have walked right past each other that day, as they often did, exchanging nothing more than knowing glances... however, Anakin did not feel like being coy. Not right now— not even with Ferus. 

Anakin, today, was in pursuit of an explanation.

"What was _what?"_ Ferus asked back. He couldn't help but frown, already irritated by the tone of Anakin's voice. It seemed that the boy had come into one of his 'moods'; Ferus hated Anakin's 'moods'.

"I saw the way you looked at him— don't think for a minute that I didn't!" Anakin grabbed Ferus' arm, and leered at him in a manner which would have sent a cold chill down nearly anyone's spine... anyone except for Ferus, anyway.

Unfazed, Ferus shook his arm free and returned his accuser's expression. "Looked at _who?"_ he asked. "What the hell are you talking about?" 

"If I really need to explain it to you," said Anakin, "I'm not about to do it here." He looked around himself to make sure the two weren't being observed. _"Come with me,"_ he demanded, and he grabbed hold of Ferus again as if the older boy had never objected to it in the first place.

"I can't come with you to your room right now!" protested Ferus, his annoyance very obviously permeating his words. While Ferus (against both his ethics and his better judgment) did sometimes join Anakin there for the purpose of quelling their mutual and largely-unspoken lonesomeness, he was in no position to be doing so right now. He was due in the Archives in mere minutes for the purpose of instructing some of the younger Padawans on how to make the most of their time there, and he had no desire to be late. "I have to be in the Archives soon," he went on, as the insistent grip on his arm grew tighter. "I—"

"Shut _up,"_ Anakin growled through his teeth, proceeding to wrench Ferus along with him as he guided him down the corridor. When he looked back at Ferus' face, though, he recognized the confusion in his eyes: It softened him, if only marginally; made him add, "It won't take long. _I just want to know what's going on."_

Ferus didn't say anything else. He just shook his head, and begrudgingly followed Anakin in the direction of his room. He really didn't know what the hell the boy was talking about, but whatever it was, he certainly seemed serious about it. He still didn't want to go with Anakin; still didn't want to be late... but he also didn't want to cause a scene.

Whatever Anakin needed, Ferus reasoned, perhaps he could provide it with relative ease. He might not have understood just what was going on, but he was also sure he had nothing to answer for— if all Anakin needed was to ask him something, then maybe Ferus really would be in and out of his room quickly enough to make it to the Archives on time.

The jaunt down the hallway to Anakin's quarters was, indeed, not an especially long one. Despite this, by the time Anakin had dragged Ferus into the small space and slammed the door shut behind them, whatever it was inside of him that had softened in response to Ferus' incredulity had hardened up again.

"There," he said. "We're alone now, and you can tell me what the hell it was you were doing with _him."_

Ferus made a noise to indicate his frustration. "I _still_ don't know who or what you're talking about. Do you think you might want to give me a hint?"

Anakin made a sound, too; something like a growl, but with a distinct undercurrent of vulnerability. Ferus didn't pick up on that, though— not yet.

"You _do_ know what I'm talking about!" Anakin insisted. "It was— well, _him!_ That boy you were talking to just a few minutes ago!" He paused. A bit more quietly, "...I saw you with him earlier this week, too."

Ferus thought a moment. "...Do mean the page boy from the Senate?" Young people from all over Coruscant, usually teenagers, were recruited each year to provide secretarial services to the Senators. The boy Anakin seemed to be talking about had been one of them, merely seeking Ferus' assistance in relaying a series of messages from a politician to the Council.

"Is _that_ what he does?"

 _"Yes._ I only wanted to show him—"

"Show him _what,_ exactly?"

It finally dawned on Ferus what Anakin was really saying. "You can't mean— _oh, for goodness sake, Anakin._ You're being ridiculous. Do you really believe I have the time or energy for more than one twisted little dalliance? You're even more crazy than I thought you were if you think—"

 _"I'm not crazy!_ You know I hate it when you call me that! I just... I saw the way you were smiling at him, and I—"

"I smile at _everyone,_ Anakin!" Ferus shouted, his exasperation finally getting the better of him. "It's called 'being pleasant'— and maybe if you gave it a try sometime, you'd have an easier—"

"Shut up! _Just shut up!_ Stop pretending like you don't understand what I'm getting at!"

"I _don't_ understand what you're getting at! If you're asking whether or not I'm fucking anyone here except for you, then the answer is 'no'— no matter what you think you saw." This time, Ferus was the one who paused. "...Anyway, what do _you_ care how I look at anybody else? You've said it yourself: All we are to each other is a way to stave off loneliness."

Anakin's aggressive leer dissolved as his expression took on a more plaintive quality. Truthfully, someone to help him quell the solitude of training to be a Jedi Knight meant a lot to him, and he'd assumed Ferus knew that. For all the disdain they'd shown each other in the past, Anakin had detected a palpable difference in their dynamic since they'd started giving in to their more basal urges.

It was a change Anakin liked— a change that brought him comfort in a place where comfort was frequently all too scarce.

"I care because you— I-I mean, you're the only one who—" Anakin stammered and gaped, and repeatedly cut himself off. He didn't know what to say, because he hadn't believed it needed to be said. _I need you,_ he wanted to tell Ferus. _You're the only person who lets me touch them, and the only person who I let touch me. We're both different, don't pretend we're not! In a place as lonely as this, doesn't keeping our pain at bay mean something? Because it means something to me. **You** mean something to me._

Anakin wasn't quite brave enough to say all of that, though— or perhaps he simply wasn't old enough to harness the words. 

Maybe he was embarrassed by the way he felt.

For as aggressively as he'd first come off, Ferus thought, this couldn't have been easy for Anakin. But why the hell would he think that Ferus was fucking anybody else, even if he did have cause to care? However it might have seemed he 'looked' at other boys, he'd never been drawn to any of them the way he was drawn to the person he'd once (and sometimes still) considered to be his chief annoyance.

It pained him to admit it, but since the two of them had started their clandestine affair, Ferus hadn't even so much as thought about anybody else the way he now thought about Anakin Skywalker. He'd believed his feelings to be self-evident; he was somewhat offended, in fact, by the notion that he'd share himself so freely with anyone else.

Ferus finally sensed something from Anakin, then— something akin to fear. But what did Anakin have to be frightened of? It shouldn't have taken Ferus so long to put two-and-two together, perhaps, but matters of the heart were an area in which he lacked expertise. 

He'd barely even recognized his connection to Anakin, before now, as a 'matter of the heart'.

The two had been staring at one another in silence for a little while by that point. Anakin hadn't been prepared for the confession he risked eliciting from himself as a result of his accusation, and Ferus only barely understood what Anakin was trying to say.

"Tell me what you're afraid of," Ferus tried, Anakin's fear having made it a bit easier for his deeply-ingrained sense of compassion to come through. It was a part of himself born of having been raised by the Jedi from infancy, and however difficult Anakin sometimes was to empathize with, Ferus' inclination was to do so... especially lately. 

Especially since they'd grown close.

Anakin's lip trembled at the question he'd been posed. His frustration and jealousy and paranoia were eating at him; gnawing away at the vestigial self-control he found it difficult to harness at the best of times. Seeing Ferus smile at that other boy had awoken something in him; a type of fear he'd never quite experienced before. Anakin was frequently scared, even if he didn't tend to make it evident; however, this kind of fear was something different.

This kind of fear _hurt._

"I'm afraid you'll get tired of me," he confessed, far more quietly than either he or Ferus would have expected. "I— I'm... afraid you'll get close to someone you like more, someone who annoys you less. I'm afraid I'll... well, that I'll _lose_ you."

When it came right down to it, that was exactly what it was— Anakin feared losing Ferus; losing his attention, and his affection. Truth be told, he'd practically come to live for those moments in time that the two of them had grown accustomed to stealing from one another. When he felt trapped, overwhelmed, inadequate, or just plain fed-up, he knew he had something to look forward to in the form of some private time with Ferus: He was the only other Padawan in the Temple who understood the sheer weight of the Jedi Order's highest expectations the same way Anakin did.

No one but Ferus, after all, even came close to mirroring his own level of skill or natural aptitude. Each of them was a boy who'd come to define himself by how useful he was to others, rather than by what he really thought of who he was.

This had put them at odds repeatedly over the years, but more than that, it had created a space in which they'd found it unsettlingly easy to form a mutual bond... even if neither of them had fully understood quite what they'd been doing until they'd started getting hard for one another.

"...'Lose me'?" asked Ferus simply, because he still didn't quite understand. Of course Anakin wasn't at risk of 'losing' him. Truthfully, had no desire to be 'lost'.

"To someone else," Anakin reiterated, perhaps uselessly. His own sense of defeat had crept into his voice by then. "I mean, the things we— what we do when we're..." He trailed off and shook his head. He wasn't angry anymore. Now he just felt like crying.

"I couldn't imagine doing what we've done together with anyone but you," Ferus answered in earnest, once it became clear that Anakin wasn't going to continue. He found himself feeling caught off-guard by the boy's honestly, particularly given that he'd expected one of their more typical spats. 

"Why not?" Anakin asked, mostly because he didn't believe Ferus. As far as Anakin knew, he was nothing special, at least not in Ferus' eyes. The two had connected over their mutual giftedness and the isolation that often came along with it, but he'd always thought that, given the choice, Ferus would have selected someone different with whom to be close— someone _better._

"Because I— I mean, because _you—"_ Ferus couldn't help but falter too, grievously unaccustomed to expressing himself this way.

"Because _what?"_ Anakin demanded. The tears he'd felt stinging his eyes were just beginning to make themselves evident. He clenched his jaw tightly, and did everything he could to will them not to roll down his face.

Ferus gaped, not knowing what to say. Was Anakin really about to cry? Anakin didn't cry; Anakin _yelled._ He argued, he complained, and he lashed out... but he certainly didn't cry. What was this?

Anakin could scarcely stand the silence. "You know what?" he asked, suddenly feeling very despondent. "Never mind. _Just never mind._ Go on ahead to the Archives; look at whoever the hell you want. I—"

_"Anakin!"_

"What?!"

"I don't 'look at' anyone except for you! _I never have."_

"You're lying!" He had to be, Anakin thought.

Ferus bit down hard on his lip. He looked around the room, and then he leaned in closely to Anakin so that he could whisper... even though there wasn't anyone else there to hear him. 

_"I'm not lying,"_ he hissed, in much the same way Anakin had hissed his initial accusation. "It's only you; it's only _ever_ been you."

He didn't like admitting it, but it was true. Ferus had known for years that he had the _capacity_ to be drawn to certain people, but until Anakin, he'd never so much as considered acting on his impulses.

The fact was that he'd hardly ever even glanced at anybody else— not, that is, until he'd started 'glancing' at Anakin.

"...Do you mean that?" asked Anakin, after a yet another drawn-out pause. He spoke quietly, as though he were unsure of himself. Anakin often felt unsure of himself; however, he was not used to letting his insecurity show. When he did, these days, it was typically only to Ferus... but even Ferus had never seen him quite like this.

"Of course I mean it," Ferus said, without backing away. He and Anakin were virtually nose-to-nose now— the only other times they'd found themselves with so little distance between them had been the times they'd joined each other in bed. "I don't say things I don't mean," he added, because it was true— another thing he'd thought Anakin already knew about him.

Anakin didn't say anything— not right away. Instead, he examined Ferus' face: His eyes, the furrow of his brow, the way he held his mouth. He didn't know what he was looking for, exactly... perhaps he was in search of traces of dishonesty, or disingenuousness. Ferus, after all, _had_ to be lying— he liked Anakin's body, and he liked Anakin's company... but surely he didn't like Anakin.

...Did he?

"...You mean more to me than just what we _do_ together," Anakin confessed, his own voice nearly failing him. His heart was racing; he felt too warm. He hadn't expected this when he'd pulled Ferus aside to accuse him of having a wandering eye; still didn't understand that this was the only outcome that really made sense.

"Anakin, I—"

"You _what?"_ Ferus was so close, now, that Anakin could feel his breath. If he'd been able to reach into the Force just then, he'd have felt Ferus' heart racing, too— just like his.

"Anakin, I— I'm... well, I'm _late._ I-I have to get to the Archives." Ferus was stuttering. Ferus _never_ stuttered.

"But—"

 _"I'll come back."_ He found it within himself, then, to raise a newly (and uncharacteristically) trembling hand to _very_ tentatively place it atop Anakin's tunic, right in the centre of his chest. It was a place he'd stroked with his fingertips, nipped with his teeth, and even teased with his tongue. It was smooth and strong, and very beautiful... and Ferus had never touched it quite like this.

Anakin, to his credit, seemed to understand. He swallowed hard at a lump in his throat, and lifted his own hand to cover Ferus'.

After that, they closed what was left of the distance between them. They didn't move quickly or forcefully, as they often did; instead, they were slow and careful. Their lips, in fact, only barely brushed up against one another. This was in stark contrast to the clicking teeth and probing tongues which typically marked their hormone-driven expressions of affection.

This kiss was very different, and both of them— for all their mutual ignorance and inexperience— at least recognized that.

"Do you promise?" asked Anakin, as they parted. "To come back, I mean?"

"Yes— yes, I promise," Ferus assured him, now wishing that he didn't have to leave at all. 

"I— I'm going to wait for you."

Ferus nodded. "Alright," he said, with as much gentleness as he could muster.

He stared, then; stared straight into Anakin's eyes. It wasn't until the boy had grown a bit older that Ferus had noticed just how _blue_ they were. At this moment, although they were still unwittingly captivating, they were also brimming with tears... and, while Ferus might normally have felt frustrated by this, he found that all he wanted right now was for those tears to go away. More than that, he wanted to be the one to banish them.

To see Anakin cry, it dawned on him, was the very last thing he wanted. 

The two boys separated. Anakin pulled his hand away from Ferus', and Ferus let his palm fall from the centre of Anakin's chest. They stepped back from one another; ceased being able to feel each other's breath or warmth.

When Ferus left the room, he did so wordlessly, shutting the door behind him as gently as he could. He stood in the hallway for a moment to orient himself; it wouldn't exactly look good on him if he got lost on his way to the Archives, would it? He managed to retrieve his bearings; however, his heart still pounded, and his stomach felt as though it had been tied into a whole series of tight little knots.

Anakin, upon Ferus' exit, sat down on his bed. His lips tingled, even though those tears of his were still pricking his eyes. His heart kept on skipping, and he felt enveloped by an unfamiliar type of heat he found himself both coveting and fearing at the very same time. 

He blinked, and then he wiped his jealousy and terror and bewilderment away from his face with the sleeve of his tunic. 

After that, he commenced waiting, because waiting for Ferus to come back to him was all he could bring himself to do.


End file.
